Oral Answers to Questions

Justin Madders Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer]

The hon. Lady knows that the Immigration Advisory Committee is independent and it makes its recommendations on that basis. There are trusts—I have visited some myself—that had previously relied on agency and migrant labour that have now managed to change the way they are hiring staff so that they can better source sustainable staffing from the domestic staffing pool.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

In December 2009, Lord Lansley, as the then shadow Health Secretary, described the amount spent by the NHS on agency staff as “unforgiveable”. Since he made that statement, agency spending has spiralled out of control, rising by 83% in the past three years. Ministers are in denial about the root causes of that increase. The cuts to nursing training places have created a shortage of nurses and forced hospitals to spend vast amounts on expensive agency staff. Will the Minister now come clean and admit that it was the Government’s mismanagement that caused this financial crisis?

[Ben Gummer]

The hon. Gentleman should know that the unforgiveable thing was the dereliction of care by a Department of Health under a previous regime. It contributed to short staffing—a significant part of the scandal at Mid Staffs—that we needed to put right in short order. That required an emergency response and agency labour to be employed. We are now putting staffing on a sustainable basis; we were left with short staffing in 2010.